


The Strongest (Rivamika Week 2014)

by alienheartattack (Sanneke)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: First Meetings, Gen, Human Experimentation, Lucid Dreaming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2018-03-05 08:57:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3113828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sanneke/pseuds/alienheartattack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six-year-old Mikasa has a check-up with Dr. Yeager. That night, she has a strange dream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Strongest (Rivamika Week 2014)

After breakfast, Karl Ackerman tells his wife Shiori that they need to tidy the house, as the doctor will be around in the afternoon to check up on little Mikasa.

"I don’t understand why a doctor needs to see a healthy little girl each month," Shiori says, washing out a small stack of oatmeal-caked bowls. She glances behind her to see Mikasa wiping the table with a wet rag, not making eye contact with either of her parents but, considering the look of deep concentration on her face, clearly listening in on their conversation. "Thank you for helping me clean, Mikasa. You can go play outside now."

"But Mom, I’m not done…" the little girl says.

"You did a good job. I’ll finish for you. Go play outside." Shiori looks at her daughter, her features replicated in miniature in the girl’s oval face, and tries to put on a stern look. Mikasa shrugs, then throws the rag onto the table and runs out of the room.

"Mikasa! No running in the house!" her father calls from his seat at the head of the table, but the front door slams shut before he finishes speaking. He sighs, then refocuses his attention on his wife. Having grown up in a home full of boys, he now misses the yelling, the vulgarity, the constant tussling. It is much easier to navigate that than the quiet, calm discussions Shiori insists upon when they have a problem. He suspects that Mikasa will continue this practice when she is old enough to communicate without whining or yelling. He does not look forward to that day; at six, she is already showing signs than she is smarter than both of her parents.

"It’s normal for Dr. Yeager to come by to give Mikasa vitamin shots each month. It’s a precaution against malnutrition in case there’s a bad harvest or something," Karl explains.

"I don’t recall any vitamin shots as a child," his wife counters.

"Perhaps that was not the way of your clan. I had them all the time. I turned out fine."

Shiori rolls her eyes. “Sure you did,” she says, walking over to her husband and rubbing his arm with one slim hand. He cracks a sardonic smile at her.

* * *

Grisha Yeager always visits around three in the afternoon. His route to the Ackermans’ farm takes him outside the city gate of Shiganshina, up a dirt road that winds through farmland and then pine groves as it approaches the mountains. The trek is long but it is pleasant enough; the doctor walks accompanied by the song of the skylark and the rush of the wind through the trees.

As always, he is greeted at the front door by a hearty handshake from Karl and an offer of tea and cake from Shiori, which he declines more often than not. The doctor is a tall man, slim as a reed, with a weary, kindly face that makes him seem older than his years. It’s those damned spectacles, Karl thinks; even though he has known Grisha for close to ten years now and knows for a fact that he is three years older than the doctor, the small round glasses perched on the end of his nose give him the air of a man who should be convalescing in a rocking chair, not trekking into the mountains to give a little girl some vitamins.

"Grisha, good to see you," Karl says as he shakes the doctor’s hand, enfolding it in his bear-paw grasp, then lets him into the house.

"Hello, Dr. Yeager," Shiori adds, busying herself before a large pot of rabbit stew on the stove. "Would you like something to drink?"

"Good afternoon, Karl, Shiori. No, thank you," Grisha replies. "The Bruegger twins have both come down with the measles so I have to head over there as soon as possible. I’ll just give Mikasa her shot and be on my way."

Karl frowns. “That’s a shame. I had Shiori save a bit of her sponge cake so you could have a piece. I know how much you like it.”

"I can wrap it up for him, Karl," his wife answers.

Grisha lifts one long, bony hand palm up, closing his eyes and bowing his head slightly in gratitude. “Please, there’s no need.”

Shiori retrieves a napkin and folds it around a thick wedge of cake. “I insist, Grisha.” She hands the wrapped cake to the doctor, presses the bundle into his hands. “You’re too thin,” she adds with a smile.

"You know, we were talking earlier, and Shiori thinks your vitamin shots for Mikasa are unusual," Karl tells Grisha with a smirk.

"Karl!" Shiori snaps as her husband leaves the room to retrieve their daughter. Her eyes are wide with embarrassment, her mouth twisted in a nervous smile. "I’d just never heard of such a thing before."

"It is perfectly safe and normal," Grisha says, his voice soft. "I’m sure Karl had them all his life. So did I, and I give them to my son Eren as well. It’s customary in this area, since a bad harvest can mean starvation. And when a child does not get proper nutrition during childhood, they may grow up to have health problems as an adult. You see them a lot in the cities — short, thin little creatures that don’t look like they’ll survive the winter." He pauses, sighs. "A lot of times, they don’t."

Shiori frowns, her lips twitching with a retort that does not come. It seems wrong, somehow, but she has no evidence to counteract the doctor’s words, only a gut feeling that there is no earthly reason for a little girl to be stuck with a needle each month. “I understand,” she says cautiously, although in truth she does not.

"I don’t like these shots, Dr. Yeager," Mikasa says as she enters the room, shepherded by her father, his hand resting atop her dark head.

Karl frowns at his daughter’s words. “Say hello to the doctor.”

"Hello, Dr. Yeager. I don’t like these shots," she repeats.

"You’re a growing girl," the doctor says, crouching down on his knees before Mikasa. "It’s good for you. You want to be big and strong, right?"

The little girl frowns, her dark brow furrowing. “Yes,” she admits, pouting.

"Come sit at the table," Karl says to his daughter as Grisha starts to unpack the black satchel he takes with him on his visits. For Mikasa he unloads a syringe, a glass bottle filled with a clear liquid, a few pieces of gauze, a tiny cork-stopped bottle marked "Alcohol," and a bandage. The girl stares up at the doctor with huge black eyes as he readies the syringe, plunges it into the clear liquid and fills the barrel with the shot. He softly lays the filled syringe on the table, then soaks a bit of gauze with the alcohol.

Without prompting, the little girl pushes up the sleeve of her dress the way she has done every month for as long as she can remember. Grisha swipes at her skin with the wet gauze; Mikasa shivers at the sensation and wrinkles her nose at the pungent stench of alcohol. Grisha taps the barrel of the syringe to remove any air bubbles, then plunges the needle into the girl’s bicep. A vague remnant of a smile appears on his face as he sees Mikasa looking directly at the needle in her arm, her face utterly calm, forcing herself to watch even as he pulls the syringe out and a bead of vermillion blood follows it. The doctor swabs her arm with a wad of dry gauze, then applies the bandage.

"There you go," Grisha says, patting the girl’s shoulder. "Would you like a piece of candy?"

"Yes, please!" Mikasa grins and holds out her hands.

The doctor reaches into the breast pocket of his coat and pulls out three foil-wrapped candies. “Strawberry,” he says as he drops the sweets into the girl’s cupped hands.

"My favorite! Thank you!" she exclaims.

"Don’t eat all of them at once," Grisha says, straightening to his full height and ruffling Mikasa’s hair.

"I won’t, Dr. Yeager. My mom says I’m responsible. Aren’t I, Mom?" Mikasa asks.

Shiori nods. “You are, sweetness.” The little girl beams at the doctor.

"I’ll come back next month," the doctor says. "I’m sure you’ll shoot up like a weed by then, Mikasa."

"My Dad says I’m going to be taller than him," she says with the smugness and supreme confidence of the very young.

Grisha regards the girl with a knowing look. “If you want to be taller than your daddy, you have to be good and get your shots.”

"Yes, sir," she says, pulling at the wrapper of one of the strawberry candies. "I’ll be good."

* * *

Putting Mikasa Ackerman to bed is a marathon event, suitable only for those with the heartiest constitutions. On nights where her energy is seemingly boundless, her mother will drop to her knees in the middle of the girl’s bedroom and weep in frustration and her father will yell and eventually storm out of the house to take a walk in the woods. (At least when that happens, Mikasa climbs to bed and begs her mother to turn out the lights, but the sounds of the girl puttering around the room can be heard for hours after Shiori takes her leave and Karl comes home with apologies and kisses for his wife.)

But tonight is different: at eight-thirty Mikasa yawns and informs her parents that she is going to sleep, then pads off to her bedroom without asking for a bedtime story or to be tucked in. Her parents look quizzically at her retreating form and then at each other, then shrug and hope that this will become a more frequent occurrence.

Mikasa barely remembers even walking away from her parents. She has never felt so tired before in her life, not even on days where she has been sick and unable to get out of bed. Her limbs feel heavy and slow and she moves sluggishly toward her bed, barely remembering to kick off her shoes before she peels back her quilt and curls up beneath it. She starts snoring almost as soon as her head hits the pillow.

She does not feel herself waking up. She notices the scent in the air first, the familiar bracing smell of pine, the rich loaminess of the wet earth, and something else, something dark and metallic and meaty.

"That’s blood," a low, flat voice says. "Some shit too, I think, because you shit your pants when you die. But mostly it smells like blood."

"Why is there blood?" she asks without realizing she has done so. Her vision seems to bloom into existence and she sees herself sitting on a thick tree branch, her little legs dangling fifty feet above the forest floor. It takes her a few moments to notice that there is someone sitting next to her, a slim dark-haired man with hair hanging in his face. He is dressed neatly, a crisp white shirt over brown slacks. Although Mikasa can only see him in profile, she notices his sharp features, a slightly upturned nose, cold narrow eyes, a thin slash of a mouth.

"You’re new," he says without looking at her.

"I’m not new," Mikasa replies cautiously, unsure whether the young man is calling her a baby.

He looks over at her, assesses her with a cool gray-blue gaze. “You’re new  _here_ ,” he clarifies.

"I don’t know where here is, mister."

The man grunts. “Don’t call me mister.”

"What should I call you, then?"

"Don’t call me anything."

"Oh. What if I told you my name? My name is Mikasa Ackerman," she says.

The young man looks alarmed for a moment, his narrow eyes widening as far as they can go. “I don’t want to know your name.”

"Well, now you do. So what’s your name?" The man stays silent for a few moments, looking down at the ground. "How old are you? I’m six."

"Older."

"Why won’t you tell me how old you are?"

The young man lets out a snort of laughter. “How about you guess?”

Mikasa smiles; she loves guessing games. “Um… thirty?”

"No."

"Forty?"

"No! Come on, kid—"

“ _Mikasa_.”

"Come on, Mikasa, I’m not that old."

"Twenty-five?"

"Close. Twenty-two." His voice is gruff, weary, but Mikasa expects that. Twenty-two seems impossibly old, ancient even. She thinks about it for a moment, then realizes she doesn’t know how old her parents are.

The pine scent has faded away, leaving only the cloying stench that seems to grow stronger by the second. “Why does it smell like blood?” she asks softly. Her words are hesitant, as though she does not entirely want to know.

"I guess people are dying," he replies. "I don’t know anything about it. I’ve never been down there."

Mikasa looks over at the man, at his impassive face as he surveys the terrain beneath them. Mikasa follows his gaze and notices a huge dark stain on the ground. “You’ve been here before?”

"A lot over the years. I think I was about your age when I first came here. Maybe even a little younger."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Did they give you a shot today?"

"Dr. Yeager says they’re vitamins."

Quicker than anything she’s ever seen before, the man has her by both shoulders and is staring deep into her eyes. “Those are  _not_ vitamins,” he hisses.

"What is it?" she asks, her voice high-pitched and startled.

"They’re changing you."

Mikasa tries to squirm out of the man’s grip, but it is stronger than anything she has ever felt before, immobilizing her in her place. Still, she realizes, though she can feel the intense pressure of his hands, she feels no pain. “What are they changing me into?” she asks, her voice wavering.

"We’re the strongest," he says. "Humanity’s strongest soldiers." His voice lowers to a whisper. "Murderers.  _Monsters_.”

Before Mikasa can react but after the chill of terror overtakes her limbs, she is jerked awake by her mother’s hand on her shoulder, gasping as her eyes fly open to reveal her bedroom, brightly lit with the morning sunlight.

"Are you okay, Mikasa?" Shiori asks, her smile fading into a look of concern. "Did you have a nightmare?"

Mikasa tries to remember what has made her so upset but can only recall vague outlines of things, a tall tree, a nameless insinuating dread. She sniffles, wipes at her face with the back of her hand.

"I don’t remember."


End file.
